This summer’s exhibit at the Willamette Heritage Center looks at how technology changed our community between 1880-1920.

Maybe the most entertaining innovation featured is the introduction of motion pictures into the Salem leisure landscape. Movie culture didn’t take off right away in Salem, it evolved slowly through pop up venues, carnival attractions and the vaudeville circuit.

Salem appears to have gotten its first taste of motion pictures in February of 1895, when a Kinetoscope was put on display at 211 Commercial St. in a building that was used as part C.H. Lane’s Tailor Shop and part Billiard Hall.

Just a note that the numbering system on Salem streets was a bit different in 1895, the building was located on the west side of Commercial between Ferry and State Streets, about where the Dehn Bar is located today.

I’m betting the device was in the Billiard Hall, although the paper doesn’t specify. The original reporting by the Oregon Statesman gives a good a summary of the new invention: “It is a mechanical device, run by electricity, and the films or photographs are run past the eye at the rate of forty-six photographs per second, showing every motion as quick as a person can see it in reality.”

While the article and Edison himself claimed credit for the invention, as with so many of “wizard of electricity’s” inventions, this was probably more of a group effort.

Despite the novelty of this invention, the marketability was limited. Films were only viewable by one person at a time standing next to the cabinet and looking through an eye piece.

Projection was the next big hurdle. While not the first to come up with a practical projection machine for motion pictures, it was the Edison Company’s Vitascope that would make its debut in Salem at the Reed Opera House in 1897.

For a mere 25-50 cents you could see the “latest marvel of the age…The actual motion of the muscles of the body, breathing and heaving of the chest, movements of the hair is actually and perfectly shown.” One assumes the body, breathing and hair was that of Cissy Fitzgerald – a famous vaudeville star—known for her skirt dancing whose film, along with the images of water scenes, a watermelon eating match and a great fire were featured at the screening. At least one of the films was in color, and so lifelike that one newspaper reported upon viewing “the water scenes where the surf comes rolling in upon the beach, first row occupants have been seen to duck their heads in anticipation of getting wet. It simply baffles all analysis.”

Motion picture viewings would continue to show up in carnivals and other special events. One July 1903 carnival featured an Electric Theater with a 15-foot square screen on which people could watch “acts.” The theater was snuggled between, Professor Horne’s live dog show, a Ferris wheel, and “Vervolin the ventriloquist.”

Eventually motion pictures became a staple of Salem’s Vaudeville circuit, where they were shared the stage with travelling comedians, singing babies, dog circuses, ventriloquists, magicians, contortionists and my favorite – the unassumingly named “’Keith’ the piano wizard.”

Advertisement for the New Edison Theatre in Salem which featured regular movie showings as part of its vaudeville line up on their “Edison-o-scope.”(Photo: Salem High School Clarion Magazine, March 1905, WHC 83.1.10.4.)

The New Edison Theater, started in about 1904, appears to be the first theater to adopt the new technology which they billed as “life motion pictures” on an “Edison-o-scope.” Charging a 10-cent admission, the theater suggested patrons “come early and avoid the rush.”

The Ye Liberty Theater became the first dedicated motion picture house in Salem in 1908, although the theater was often rented out for non-movie events like dairy conventions and illustrated art lectures. The theater was located, maybe not surprisingly, on Liberty Street, on the east side between State and Court Streets.

The theater featured French equipment the paper dubs a “Gaumont Crophone” which consisted of a projector mechanically connected to a phonograph so that talking pictures could be displayed. Ironically, the opening of the theater had to be delayed because they couldn’t work up enough “juice” to power the equipment.

It should be noted that the programming at this early theater was quite different than what we experience today. Shows consisted of “five or six moving picture films, an illustrated song and three of the talking picture films.”

The rise of movie culture also brought concerns about the morality of entertainment. Theaters were quick to advertise the wholesomeness and refinement of their offerings.

The New Edison Theater claimed that every performance was “strictly moral.” As the number of theaters grew, Salem even passed a city ordinance to help regulate the content of movies being shown.

Ordinance No. 1548, approved May 22nd, 1918, stated that “It shall be unlawful for any person, firm or corporation…to project, produce or exhibit in any public place or in a place to which the public is admitted, any motion picture play, motion picture exhibition, or series of motion pictures, which are obscene, indecent or immoral, or which are reasonably likely to provoke a breach of the peace, or to incite a riot, or to arouse the indignation or resentment of, or which is obnoxious or offensive to any of the loyal and patriotic citizens of the City.”

The ordinance goes on to name the City Marshal, Mayor and Police Matron as a “Board of Censors” to oversee implementation of the ordinance and authorized a fine of between $10 and $15, or a day of imprisonment served in lieu of each $2 of the fine.

It is interesting to speculate what might have incited the passing of this new ordinance, especially as it came at the height of U.S. involvement in World War I. To date, I have found no evidence of movies inciting any riots.

Learn more about movie history in Salem and other inventions that changed the lives of those living in our community at Yesterdayland: Innovations of the Past on display through Sept. 1, at the Willamette Heritage Center.